The survival game loses 1.3 million players on Steam in just two weeks, setting a new negative record. But there is no reason to worry
Overnight, the survival game with Pokémon-like animals and miniguns became the first surprise hit of 2024. On January 28, Palworld reached a peak of over 2 million concurrent players.
Now the Survial hit is setting another record, this time not so pretty: In just two weeks, Palworld loses over 1.3 million players on Steam More than any other game in the same period of time. We take a closer look at the figures
Player drop: 1.3 million fewer than two weeks ago
Since its release on January 19, Palworld’s numbers increased daily, until they reached 2,101,867 concurrent Steam users on January 28 In the days that followed, the number of players decreased again until it leveled off at an average of 600,000 last week
What seems highly dramatic at first glance is actually not so catastrophic: Palworld is currently still the second most-played Steam game, just behind Counter-Strike 2 with around 800,000 players.
Overnight, the survival game with Pokémon-like animals and miniguns became the first surprise hit of 2024. On January 28, Palworld reached a peak of over 2 million simultaneous players.
Now the Survial hit is setting another record, this time not so pretty: In just two weeks, Palworld loses over 1.3 million players on Steam More than any other game in the same period of time. We take a closer look at the figures
Player drop: 1.3 million fewer than two weeks ago
Since its release on January 19, Palworld’s numbers increased daily, until they reached 2,101,867 concurrent Steam users on January 28 In the days that followed, the number of players decreased again until it leveled off at an average of 600,000 last week
What seems highly dramatic at first glance is actually not so catastrophic: Palworld is currently still the second most-played Steam game, just behind Counter-Strike 2 with around 800,000 players.
We remember: At the all-time peak, Palworld even managed to overtake the perennial favorite and only lost the battle for the crown to PUBG, which has a maximum player count of over 3 million. The fact that a game loses players after its initial hype is nothing unusual and was also to be expected in the short or long term with Palworld.
However, no other game on Steam has ever lost so many players in such a short time. Yes, even PUBG no longer has its 3,257,248 players and has leveled off at an average of 300,000-400,000. However, this downward trend has taken months and not two weeks as is now the case with Palworld.
Even Lost Ark, which has also lost over 1.2 million players since its release and peak of 1,325,305, was able to keep the player base a little longer
The future of Palworld
Of course, there are a few factors to consider when looking at the figures:
- Palworld is still in Early Access and could win back many players with new updates. As an example: The Forest has also gained more and more players with ongoing updates in EA (even if it doesn’t quite play in the same league as the survival hit).
- This is just the data from Steam. Palworld is also available on Xbox and in Game Pass. However, it is unknown how many players are currently active there.
- Independent of the active player numbers, the survival game has already reached over 19 million players after just two weeks since release – 12 million of them on PC and 7 million on Xbox. This makes it the biggest Game Pass release of a third-party title
The developers also have big plans: The studio announced on Twitter that they are desperately looking for new developers
Yパルワールドでは、まだまだやりたい事が沢山ありますが、仲間が圧倒的に足りておりません！！！
全職種 募集しておりますが、特に 企画・エンジニア を最も募集しております！
経験したエンジン等は問いませんので、全く新しいゲームづくりに興味がある方は、是非ご応募下さい！！ pic.twitter.com/xyJNuNhdWb
– パルワールド/Palworld 公式 (@Palworld_JP) February 8, 2024
There’s still so much we want to do at Palworld, but we’re totally short of colleagues!!!
We are hiring for all positions, but we are especially looking for planners and engineers!
It doesn’t matter what engine you have experience with, if you are interested in developing a new game, please apply!!!
@Palworld_JP via X
The Japanese studio Pocket Pair still has a lot planned for its survival game. An initial roadmap already promises the elimination of critical bugs, important optimizations such as AI pathfinding or key mapping, and new features such as PvP, new islands, pals and bosses and, of course, endgame content.
Whether the developers will be able to maintain the current player base over the coming months remains to be seen. However, we will of course be following the development of Palworld for you
If you want to read more about the future of Palworld, the downsides of development or the controversial Pokémon mod, we recommend the articles linked above.
What about you? Are you still playing the unusual survival game? Or have you already put it aside like 1.3 million other players?
